PhotoBooks Iran

In this text, five authors explore the life and career of the Iranian photographer, Antoin Sevruguin. The book includes a portfolio of signature works by the photographer whose innovations in lighting, composition and development have contributed to the evolution of photography.

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In Shirin Neshat's photographs, Persian calligraphic script is transcribed over black and white depictions of the exposed faces, hands, and feet of Iranian women. In her video works, swarms of women in black "hijabs" ululate, a man in a white dress shirt and black pants sings to an all-male audience, and a lone, nearly invisible woman chants to herself in a darkened house. Always aesthetically compelling, Neshat's work is equally thematically ambiguous, never settling on a simple or singular meaning, never offering social commentary within prescribed limits. Though focused on the particulars of sex segregation and the suppression of women in contemporary Iran, Neshat underscores the relevance of her poetic, disturbing, moving ensembles to a broader culture. This monograph documents and provides critical insight into the evolution of her work. [Shirin Neshat's work] is not a self portrait. And the actions are too emblematic to furnish an agenda for social activism in the Middle East. Yet they seem to belong to some immemorial enactment, which has been ritualized and repeated. The work is mesmerizing, and if you are like me, you will want to see it again and again. It is an allegory of obscure but inescapable meaning. --Arthur Danto

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In distinctive ways, Iran is one of the most photogenic countries in the world -- a place where dazzling architecture is set amid desolate expanses of desert or steppe; where snow-capped mountains plunge dramatically to a seacoast of steamy lushness; where nomads guide their flocks to seasonal pasturelands; where tombs, temples, castles, and mosques bespeak the richness of the Persian past. High and dry for the most part, the land is sectioned by great mountain ranges, dotted with venerable villages of mud and stone as well as modern cities, and has a cultural fabric woven of many different threads -- Persian, Turkic, Kurdish, Baluchi and even Mongol. For a photographer to capture such a mix of spectacular terrain and cultural complexity is a formidable challenge, one that Daniel Nadler, an American born in Egypt, has met brilliantly in Iran the Beautiful. This book, comprising more than 170 photographs, takes as its symbolic center the magnificent landmark of Mount Damavand, the highest peak in the Middle East, and ranges outward from there north to the Caspian Sea, east as far as Gonbad-e Kavus, west toward Zanjan, and south to Isfahan. All lie no more than a day's drive from the great volcano, yet within those bounds can be found a spectrum of landscapes, lifestyles, and architectural treasures that show why Iran, once seen, can never be forgotten.

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